Unloaded!

Unloading is like Christmas and your birthday and also like the day you find out your crush likes your sister. There were lots of great pots in the kiln. There were a couple of heartbreakers: one sushi tray I was excited to see caught a bunch of shelf flack, for example; and a platter warped badly.

Couple of notes:

• I am done putting Oribe on the insides of things. Two otherwise-lovely casseroles will need to be re-fired because the oribe is pebbly inside. And recently a student showed me a bowl of hers that had held salsa over night, and the oribe changed color where the salsa touched! It was a different recipe (glaze, not salsa!) than what I use, and there's nothing in either that could leach out and harm someone (copper, yes; but so little of it) but it creeped me out.
• The changes I made to my cobalt glaze, to make it better suited for soda firing! Win. Smooth and buttery, almost purple where there's less soda, glassy and deep blue where there's more. Check it out here:
  
  

About half the pots in this firing were pet urns, headed for The Cat Doctor in Portland.

Old is New: Flower Bricks

I've been interested lately in a shape I've seen while searching for the Thursday Inspiration artists: Both Kristen Kieffer and Lana Wilson make flower bricks. I thought it was a relatively new idea, but as I should know, in clay there is nothing new under the sun; it is in fact a very old idea. Here are a few antique flower bricks I found on the web.


Being inspired is not a euphemism for copying, however. I am shooting for my own take on flower bricks. These are use three pounds of clay, which is a bit heavy, but for this function I think a little ballast is a benefit.
I throw an closed form, sort of bullet-shaped, then immediately drop and roll it on each side to flatten. After they are leatehr hard, I will cut openings to hold the stems; one of my students described it as "an integrated frog."

Disciplined like a House Cat

"Discipline is remembering what you want.” David Campbell (whoever that is. )

While I agree with this sentiment, failures of discipline are not all bad! Case in point:

After circumstances conspired to thwart my plans to load the kiln during the day on Wednesday - a surprise vet appointment, a meeting that really needed to happen, and had already been re-scheduled twice - I tried to make myself finish loading Wednesday night, in the 15 degree dark. I was gritting my teeth, growling to myself,"No! I will not let this be de-prioritized!" And then I just thought, Fuck it, I'll do it tomorrow.

All I can think is how much happier I was, loading in the brilliant sunshine and above-freezing temperatures. The wadding wasn't freezing to the furniture; my hands weren't numb and dropping wads that I had to go search for, lest they ruin work below; I didn't make dumb mistakes due to tiredness.
Of course, it also pushed the firing to Friday, unloading Monday, as I decided there was nothing to be gained by staying up all night firing. That would almost certainly have put me in bed with a migraine all day Friday. There's determination; then there's obstinance; and then there's plain old stupidity.
Failure of discipline seems to be a bit of a theme this week: I also noticed, that, despite my best intentions, I can rarely make myself do any other productive thing while the kiln is firing. It's this weird kiln of Genesisian Seventh Day, pardon the blasphemy. I had big plans to clean up my studio (and house) and to get some pots made for the next firing cycle. The most useful thing I managed was a load of laundry. I spent most of the day reading a big book: The Better Angels of Our Natures: Why Violence has Declined, and napping intermittently, like a cat. And I can't say I regret it a bit.

Unloading Monday, January 30!

Thursday Inspiration - Matthew Hyleck

See lots more of Matthew's work here. I am greatly enamored of these pots, and, with my new-found appreciation for web design, I really enjoy his website.

A Different Drum

My student and friend Peg, who writes her own blog here, has been working on a drum in class. I've never made a drum; I am learning so much watching her. The head of the drum will be made of goatskin (which you can get at goatskins.com. Yes, really. I don't know why I find that so amusing.) I'll get some shots of the top being finished, when Peg brings in the goatskin.

Can't wait to see it finished.

Thrown, Altered, and Assembled

Workshop: Thrown, Altered, Assembled
Portland Pottery
Saturday, February 25
1 - 5 pm
An interactive workshop featuring forms thrown on the wheel, then cut, squeezed, folded and otherwise altered and assembled. Here's a sample of the kinds of things I will be demonstrating.
$60
$45 for current Portland Pottery students
Call to register: 207-772-4334

Thursday Inspiration - Joy Tanner

See lots more of Joy's wood and soda-fired pots here.

New Look!

I've made some changes to my blog template. (Captain Obvious strikes again!) This was not as easy as I expected it to be, as blogger doesn't give you a user-friendly way to manipulate their existing templates, but instead you have to choose "edit html" under the "design" tab. I found this handy page for html color codes, which I expect will come in useful in future projects as well.

I made the changes for a more integrated look with the website. Some people change their blog addresses and build a new blog which is an actual page of their websites, but I really didn't want to do that. I can't see the benefit, and it seems like many readers would get left behind in the shift. I am not sure I like the new look, though; luckily I saved the old template so I can switch back if I'm not pleased after I get used to it.

*Yeah, I don't know. I just did the click through from finemesspottery.com. I'm not convinced it's any less obviously a jump to a different site than it was before. Well, I will give it a few days. Switching back, if necessary, will actually be easier than making the changes in the first place.

Cottage and Lodge

One of the decisions I made during the week was to start packaging my wholesale offerings into two lines. This comes out of a conversation with Jamie Oates and Jeanette Faunce of Maine-ly Pottery, about how a unified look is more appealing, and partly from my donut-shop reflections. Also rattling around in my thinking is the study out of Columbia that suggests that, confronted with too many choices, people are LESS likely to buy, which makes me want to simplify my offerings. Not by making less stuff - like that would ever happen - but by organizing it in a way that people are looking at fewer, more similar pieces.

Because I live in Maine, and my work is sort of casual and carefree, I am calling the two lines Cottage and Lodge, after the places where Mainers go to unwind. Well: we also go to the beach, and to Three Dollar Dewey's, but no one brings pottery to those places. Folks with cabins and summer places often furnish them with greater attention than they do their homes.
So. My job today (while waiting for the vessel sinks to dry) is to make a list of the pieces I will need for such a line. I am starting with Lodge, becuase it's 3 F outside and I am in a Lodge kind of a mood. There will, of course, be some overlap between lines, both will need plates, mugs, and bowls for example. Lodge will incorporate the thicker, faceted pieces I have been working on, and utilize the darker glazes: tenmoku, amber celadon, June Perry Oribe, Satin Doll Black; all contrasted with unglazed areas of flashing slip.

Items:

• Mugs
• Plates
• Soup/salad bowls
• Sugar/ creamer set
• Baking dishes
• Casserole
• Serving Bowl
  

Okay, into the studio I go.

A Thing You Didn't Know About Vessel Sinks

Two actually:

1) At least half the time when I type the phrase "vessel sinks" I mistype it "vessel dinks."

And, more importantly:

2) You need a special kind of drain for them(sinks, not dinks. I don't want to know what kind of drain you need for vessel dinks.) A normal pop up drain (the image on the left) won't do, as a vessel sink (usually) has no overflow. Most building codes require a grid drain instead, which has slots out of the top and is 1/8" larger than a standard pop-up drain. Okay, maybe you did know that, but I certainly didn't, and wouldn't have, if it were not for the help of David Smith, of SmythCid Pottery, where they've forgotten more about stoneware sinks than I will ever know. Check out some of their sinks here.

After shrinkage the measurement of the lip would now be 2.5".

A thing that I did know, if I thought about it, is that the edge of the drain must sit below the bowl, or an icky little pool of water will collect at the bottom. I knew it, because I know that water can't flow up; but would I have thought of it before or after I fired the first sink? I am spared finding out, thankfully, since David pointed this consideration out in his email in addition to the drain information.

So! Off to reconfigure the drain hole on my first sink. I had not yet made the hole in the second.

Vessel Sink Thinks

I am approaching this all wrong, this vessel sink thing.

Perhaps because I am a middle child, I have a strong people-pleasing streak. I have about as much faith in birth order personality traits as I do in dream interpretation, which is to say, not much; but that dream in which you are naked in public and nobody notices probably does mean you are feeling self-conscious about something that is really no big deal. Our shared human experiences probably cause us to manifest certain feelings in similar ways in our dreams. Astrology, on the other hand, strikes me as somewhat amusing bullshit. In fact....

Ooops, I think the Irrelevancy Alarm just went off.

Back to the post. Oh, right, people pleasing. Okay, so, what's wrong with this picture?

Nothing, except, it's just a big bowl. A jolly-jigger or Ram Press could do it just as well, only faster and easier.

I find that I am focusing so much on the utilitarian aspects, that I am forgetting to make it a good pot, a pot that I like. Something unique and special, that could only be handmade. What's that to do with people-pleasing? I've been so determined to make something that no one will hate, that I've forgotten to make a pot that someone will absolutely love.
Sooo....


There! Fixed it!

I need to remember, a really big bowl is just like any other pot: I can't let it get so precious that I am unwilling to risk ruining it; otherwise it's condemned to be ordinary.

Circling the Drain

Throwing a big bowl is the easy part. The tricky part began today: figuring out how the holes work with the plumbing. I have a sample drain pipe, with the little gasket thing that lets you fill the sink.

The outer dimension of the pipe is 1 5/16"; which means that the hole through the bottom has to shrink to larger than that in order for the pipe to fit through. The flange is 2" wide, which means the lip surrounding the hole has to shrink to at least that large. The spec for B-mix Sand is 12% shrinkage, plus or minus 2%. I had a momentary freak out when I saw that plus-or-minus business, but the tolerances must be...sufficiently tolerant, or no one would be able to make vessel sinks. SO. Assuming 13% shrinkage, because it's better for both hole and flange to be too large rather than too small:

• The hole I made 1 5/8"
• The lip around the hole I made 2 3/8"

I cut the hole once and had to fill it in again before I decided to make a run to the store for a compass. Things went much more easily then.

Gaah! I have to go turn up the bisque. I've been so engrossed in this project I forgot I was firing!